Nocturne
by s2LaDolceVita
Summary: A rough London girl living a hard-knock life becomes entwined with a certain wealthy lord with a scarred past. This isn't your normal sunshine and butterflies kind of story. Secrets, vendettas and plot twists threaten to break the two lovers but what they have to lose, is more than just their love. Takes place in 1800s England. RinxLen, non-cest.
1. Prologue

**Prologue**

**_A/N: Hi all! This is a new story of mine. Oh gosh I know I shouldn't be starting anything new especially since I have "Married to the Enemy" I'm still working on (my other rinxlen fic), but I just couldn't help it! I hope you enjoy it, although this is just a prologue of what is to come hehehe. It's a very different genre from Married to the Enemy. Much more dramatic and this definitely won't be sunshine and butterflies. Let me know what you think! Okay gonna shut up now and let you get onto the reading.  
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**__****_October 13th 1906_**

**It was pouring rather hard that morning. As usual it was a gloomy day in London with overcast gray clouds and the rain pelting down as if to drown the world. The horse carriage pulled to a stop in front of the familiar dingy old white building, with the lettering peeling off. The carriage driver, hurried over to the door with a black umbrella ready as I stepped off.**

**"Have a good day, Doc" the youth called out to me as he shaded his head in an attempt to avoid the rain.**

**I heard the echoes of the horse hooves on the cobbled roads as the carriage turned the corner and out of sight. I opened the door to the building and pulled out my pen and notepad. It would be my 38th visit now. It would be, my last visit.  
I slowly walked down the hallway, passing several doors until at last I came to the very last one at the end, and here I opened the door.**

_"There was a boy, a very strange enchanted boy, they say he wandered very far….very far….over land and sea. A little shy and sad of eye, but very wise was he…..This he said to me: 'the greatest thing you'll ever learn is just to-'"_

I saw the man sitting in the corner as usual, his golden-blonde hair covering his eyes, humming that same old tune.

"_love and be loved in return_", I said, finishing his sentence for him.

The man looked up at me, his aquamarine eyes vacant and empty as he stopped singing.

"Hello there, have you come to hear my story?", he said to me.

I sighed, and massaged my temples, but he continued to speak.

_"_I suppose the first thing you should know about me is that I cannot feel. But now it seems as natural as anything, I guess one can really get used to anything if he really tried."

The man chuckled, but it was an empty laughter, I noted on my notepad.

"This story…is about my love. Did I tell you? We're going back to Venice together"

He smiled and for a second I noticed some true beams of happiness, I quickly scrawled this down on paper.

"Her name was Rin Kagamine, and the story begins here: London, the year 1886.….."


	2. It's a Hard Knock Life

**_A/N: PLEASE READ THIS FIRST. THIS CHAPTER CONTAINS SOME MATURE CONTENT. I didn't think it was graphic enough to be rated an M, but others might think otherwise so consider yourself warned! :)  
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**Chapter 1: It's a Hard Knock Life**

**London, England 1886**

"Come back here ya bloody whore! I paid a good pence for your hide!"

She tugged up her ripped skirts and ran, simply ran as far as she could, hearing the dull faraway thuds of her bare feet colliding with the dirty cobble stones of the road. How many times now? She counted in her mind, once, twice, three times she had been sold into the devils work. But this time, it took a toll, for her body and mind were exhausted beyond repair.

Rin Kagamine groaned as she felt a hot searing pain jolt through up her leg, halting to a stop at a dark corner, where she felt she might be temporarily safe against the men who would soon be searching for her. She felt the warm stickiness of the familiar liquid seeping onto the crude floor.

"Oh Christ", she swore under her breath as she swiftly pulled out the glass shard she had stepped on, from her blackened foot.

She bit her lip in pain as she tore off an already raggedy edge of her dress and wound her wounded foot with the cloth, to stop the bleeding for a moment. Though she figured she should be used to it. Growing up in the shady area of London as a street rat, she had enough injuries to prove her worth. That's what kept Rin up most nights because sometimes the pain all came flooding back as soon as she closed her eyes.

Rin knew she wasn't a pretty girl, and frankly around her part of London, there weren't many pretty girls around. All the girls were just like her, different stories maybe, but in the end they were just like her- scarred and disfigured. Didn't even matter if it was physical or mental, when it all came down to it the whole lot of them were just the devil's whores. For Rin though, it was scarring both ways. She didn't like to think about it, and half the time she couldn't remember most of it because she had learned to block it out over the years but the bits she could remember, well, they weren't pretty just like the rest of herself.

All she recalled was blazing fire, and after that everything else was pitch black, but her body was solid proof of what happened, the burn marks had left large areas of her body wrinkled and shiny and ultimately disfigured. Even her customers shuddered when they tore off her clothing to satiate their disgusting lust, but they were desperate enough to just close their eyes and continue.

So that was the story of how she ended up on the streets selling her body to the night. She didn't have parents and she didn't really care. Oh but don't get her wrong, she used to care, she used to care a hell of a lot when she was younger and first getting into this hellhole of a business, but the years had hardened her and made her face reality, and the reality was that in the end wishing you had parents were just silly dreams and nothing more. When life got hard for girls like her, they had to learn to deal and that was that.

But lately, the nightmares had been getting more and more infrequent and instead a strange dream came in their stead. A man playing a piano, he said nothing at all but the melody was enough words for her. He beckoned her with his playing, embraced her with its sound.

Rin awoke with a start as she felt something or someone jabbing her side.  
"Only a dream" , she mumbled, as she yawned realizing she had fallen asleep on the grimy floor.  
"What? What's that you said missy?"  
She jumped and tumbled backwards as she thought she had gotten caught by her masters.  
"No need to be getting ascared of me, now. I know what kind of a living you make"

When her eyes adjusted, she realized she was staring up at a man, thankfully not one of her masters, but a ragged man just the same who looked like he lead a pretty rough life himself. He had a mangy beard, twisted and knotted from lack of proper grooming, a dirt coated face, with a toothless grin. His clothes were mismatched and holey from wear, tattered at the edges just like her own dress and he had a hole in one worn shoe. From her guess, he was from around here probably just getting by being a pickpocket or something of that sort.

"Whatchu starin at yer little whore? I ain't much to look at that's for true, but I'm a paying customer the same as anyone else" he spat at her, his foul breath making her recoil.  
But he shoved his grimy hands into his pockets and pulled out a few silver coins.

She didn't want to do it but she had no choice. After running away she didn't have much of a plan but she knew she needed money and she had left her stash at the whorehouse, a place she couldn't return to now without the risk of being beaten to death.

"Yeah, bet yer like the shine of these pretties don t yer?" He grinned again as he drifted his beady eyes along her scantily clad body.  
With a mad look in her eyes, she dove for the coins in his hand, but being a pickpocket or something of the sort, he was too quick for her.  
"Pleasure first, pay later" He said with a tricky gleam in his eyes, "After all, there's plenty of yous around town that I can go to if you refuse".  
Rin knew she didn't really have an option, after all, she was at disadvantage here, so she was just going to have to trust the vile man.  
"Fine" , she surrendered as he chuckled and pulled up her skirts.

'I'll just close my eyes and it'll be over' , Rin thought to herself as she felt him climb atop of her.

In what seemed a half hour, the man pulled up his trousers and smiled, "Thank yer dearie, in a heaven damned city like this, a little pleasure does a man like me quite good."

"No denying times is hard sir, so my payment I've earned.." Rin started

"Times is hard, times is hard indeed. But you've been good dearie, god'll bless yer" He chuckled as he began to run off.  
"You dirty ol bastard!" Rin cursed as she began to run after him, but she hadn't gone more than a few feet before she groaned out in pain, her injured foot becoming her handicap. She knew she had lost him, he was a pickpocket and had experience escaping, no match for her with her injured foot.

She thought she might slump down and cry, but it was at this moment that she saw a piece of paper that the man had probably dropped while he ran off. She picked it up, hoping there was a loose piece of change in it, anything to get her by, and unfolded the creases. It was a flyer, she might be uneducated elsewhere but for some reason she had always known how to read.

**Make a fortune in Venice! The city of bright lights and excitement**

Below the words were pictures of gorgeous castles and buildings, brightly lit and men and women of seemingly high stature dressed in silks and velvets who smiled up at her, beckoning her with their tempting words, "Come join us Rin" , the ad called to her, "You can always have your belly full and a roof over your head with us"

It was then that she realized, she had to get to Venice, some way, somehow.


	3. Casanova's Strange Feeling

**Chapter 2: Casanova's Strange Feeling**

My name is Len Kagamine. When I was ten, I killed myself.  
My parents,wrongly accused of treason, had perished away trying to protect me from the angry mob who threatened to force their way in, as I was rushed away into hiding by a trusty butler.  
That day, as I was locked away in a hidden passageway behind the wall tapestries of my parent's bedroom, I shed no tears even as I knew my parents were dead. I simply, held two fingers to the side of my head and pulled the trigger. That was the last time, that I felt.  
Just as others are born blind or deaf, I was born emotionless.

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As the evening began to set in, Lord Len Kagamine, awoke from a completely restless slumber, for what seemed the umpteenth time this week. Every day, he awoke from a strange and muddled dream, he could not remember to spare his life. But he knew, in that odd tingling sense, that it was the same dream day after day. Rubbing his temples, Len rang the bell for his trusty butler, Gakupo Kamui, a descendant from the butler that had saved his life so many years ago.

"Gakupo, burn these sheets"

"My lord? You've only had them for a week"

Len flashed him a look which Gakupo knew better than to question.

"Of course" , he said as he began to strip the sheets from the four poster bed Len regularly slept on.

It was routine, Gakupo thought, but Lord Kagamine had beat his previous record of throwing out sheets.  
Lord Kagamine was prone to throwing out his sheets because it seemed the overbearing scent of women s perfume was permanently imbedded into it after awhile, despite many good and hard washings. It wasn't exactly a town secret that Lord Len was Venice's new Casanova. Every night it seemed, he had a new woman in his bed, be it a copper toned princess from the far southeast, or a fair haired maiden from the north, Gakupo had seen a complete circus of women go in and out those double doors of his master s room.

The thing was though, no same woman was ever allowed back into the manor twice, and doubtless, many had tried, only to end in heartbreak (on the females side of course). Sometimes it surprised him, not that he let on, how stony hearted his master could be. It seemed the man had absolutely no emotion whatsoever. And perhaps, this was exactly what drew those helpless women in.

"And have the maids bring in some tea, my head is pounding" Len ordered

Gakupo bowed curtly and left his quarters, as Len proceeded to his grand piano, an instrument he was always fond of playing. For some reason, whenever his fingers touched the notes, it was as if he wasn't himself anymore. Rather, floating on the fantasy of whatever melody was produced. It always made him feel at peace, and lately he had needed to play more than ever before. Day after day, he awoke with little to no sleep and a splitting headache.

He couldn't quite put his finger on it, but there was something strange happening ever since the previous week when he had attended the annual orchestra at the Palazzo. Year after year, it was usually the same pieces of music played by the same dull people, he had no idea why he attended so vigorously. But this year, there was a new pianist, one who seemed widely different from any other pianist he had seen before. First of all, he seemed to be about 70 years of age, judging from the whiteness of his hair and the wrinkles on his face, but his hands, were as smooth as they probably were the day he was born. He chose to play Chopin's Nocturne, but he played it like no other. It was as if he were being put into a trance, and though there were at least a good hundred others in the audience, during the piece, it seemed as if the pianist were playing him a secret message. At the end of his performance, the pianist stood and bowed to the crowd, but as he stood, Len could have sworn he caught a gleam in the old man's eye, directed exactly to him, and in an eerie manner, Len heard this message playing in his mind:

_There is no such thing as a coincidence_

Ever since that night, he could barely sleep and he kept awaking with a strange sense, that something very odd would soon happen.


End file.
